Tue., Mar. 27th

My plan for today:  Work on the startup sequence.  Maybe create a new class/worker thread called RunManager that is responsible for overall management of the startup sequence and maintenance of the data-collection run?

Michael Dean is supposed to come in today; he can continue working on the refactoring of the FEDM gelware into high-speed vs. low-speed modules.

Darryl (if he's feeling better) & David are also supposed to be here; I can maybe work with them to collect some higher-quality data for inclusion in the paper.

Sometime, David might also work on the PADS layout modifications.  The FlexNet license server seems to be in a good mood today and David was able to run PADS on the Acer with no complaints.  I told David he also needs to install the OrCAD demo version on the Acer sometime so that he can inspect the schematics.  To modify the schematics, though, we'll have to use the OrCAD at the College of Engineering since the demo version we're using here won't let us save changes.  Sometime I need to go over with David in more depth how to actually modify layouts in PADS.

More thoughts about RunManager:

Here's what it does:

1. It waits for the CTU node to be created, and for its host to become ready.
2. It waits for the FEDM (ShowerDetector) node to be created, and for its host to become ready.
3. It waits for the GPS_Manager to report at least one valid TRAIM reading with finite accuracy and w/o all satellites eliminated from the solution.
4. It tells the CTU host to start running (generating PPSCNTR time-reference data and timing sync pulses).  (At the same time, the TimeKeeper worker thread is started, which is responsible for archiving/visualizing the time data.  Also, the DataCollector worker thread is started, which is responsible for archiving/visualizing the FEDM data.)  After this point, subsequent data output by the FEDM will be tagged with meaningful absolute time-reference data (previous data will have all "0" values for the time-reference fields).

Started writing the file, runmgr.py.

We managed to get some nice screenshots of PMT pulses crossing multiple thresholds for the paper:

Oscilloscope screenshot of a PMT pulse that crosses 4 out of 5 voltage thresholds,
spaced linearly at -200 mV intervals, together with the corresponding digital outputs from the threshold comparators.

We also have the data from this trace in spreadsheet form, so we can re-plot the traces for the figure in the paper if we want.  Darryl can work on incorporating this into the paper.

* * *

At home this evening, I spent a while making changes to the server code to parse FEDM messages.